I’ve been alerted by Apple that all .Mac services except email will be down on Wednesday as .Mac is transitioned to MobileMe. Therefore, This Lamp, which is housed on .Mac server space, will be unavailable from 3 PM to 9 PM EST (6 PM to midnight PST).

I’m not too thrilled about .Me instead of .Mac by the way. Apple says that both will still work, so I’m not changing my email or web address just yet, but I have to wonder if two or three years down the road they might announce that all mac.com addresses will be no more.

I’ve thought about moving This Lamp to its own dedicated server space with a real thislamp.com address (right now, it only forwards to what you see in your URL line above), but that would also entail a lot of resetting internal links, so right now, I’m undecided.

Regardless, if you drop by on Wednesday and don’t find This Lamp, don’t panic, it should be back within a few hours.

Tags: Apple

Iyov has posted a review of the new ringbinder wide-margin NRSV New Oxford Annotated Bible.

Says Iyov:

So, with all that extra page space, there is plenty of room for making ample annotations. The paper is significantly thicker than typical Bible paper, so there is much less bleed through from a pen. And, I can add extra paper anytime one wants (in the fashion of Jonathan Edwards' Blank Bible). If I make a mistake, I can always remove the page and replace it with a photocopy from my bound edition of the NOAB. If I want to slip in an entire article, or a copy of a page in original languages -- there is no problem. It seems to me that this is the ultimate in flexibility.

I'm glad to see this finally released, although I doubt I'll personally buy one. Regardless, I've got a number of larger blog projects I'm working on, one of which is an update to last year's survey of wide-margin Bibles. I'm glad that I'll be able to include an entry for the NRSV this year.

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J. Mark Betrand has written "A (Bible) Reader's Manifesto." Says Bertrand:

But we find ourselves at a point in history when we've never had so many choices, and yet the options are mostly arrayed along a horizontal spectrum -- a thousand different flavors of the same basic thing. I'd like to see more vertical choices, and that might require a shift in perspective. Instead of speaking to end-users as consumers, we might have to start thinking of them as readers.

What is most significant in the post is Bertrand's five-point "Starting Points for Marketing High-End Bible Editions." I can only hope that publishers will pay attention.

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James White announced today that he will face Bart Ehrman in a debate early next year on the subject "Can the New Testament Be Inspired in Light of Textual Variation?" This will no doubt be a debate to watch/hear and then discuss.

My esteem for White dropped significantly a few years ago due to the way he handled a theological disagreement with another individual whom I respect very much. I felt his approach to the issue was uncharitable, far too public, and lacking in the kind of collegiality that should characterize Christian scholarship. Nevertheless, White is usually in natural form when he is engaged in formal debate. However, I often believe that White is rarely pitted in his debates against opponents who are equally skilled. At the very least, Ehrman should provide a worthy opponent to White and this is a subject in which both are well-versed.

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Christianity Today has released its list of the "10 Most Redeeming Films of 2007." Some entries on the list may surprise you, but it's a very good list. I remember when we used to do more movie reviews and discussion around here.

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Finally, in the I JUST DON'T GET IT DEPARTMENT: 2008 marks the 30th anniversary of the New International Version of the Bible. I've seen references on two other blogs (see here and here; oh, and also here) that Zondervan is planning a special wide-margin, high-end leather edition of the NIV Study Bible as one of the many ways that the NIV's 30th anniversary will be celebrated.

This is in spite of the fact that so many of us have asked for one decent wide-margin edition of the TNIV (the so-called TNIV Square Bible is flawed in three areas: (1) it's paper is too thin for annotations because it is a thinline, (2) the user doesn't have wide margin access to the inner column of text, and (3) the binding is subpar). If the TNIV is truly an improvement to the NIV (which I honestly believe it is), then why does Zondervan (and IBS, Cambridge, and Hodder) keep pushing the NIV and publishing new editions? If in ten years the TNIV turns out to be an also-ran translation, it will only be because publishers didn't know how to fully transition away from the NIV.

My suggestion for celebrating the NIV's 30 year anniversary? Retire it. (My apologies to everyone I just offended, including my friends at Zondervan.)

I would like to find simply ONE decent wide-margin, high quality (see Bertrand's post above for the meaning of high-quality) Bible in a contemporary 21st century translation (HCSB, NLTse, TNIV, or NET). I'm still writing down notes in my wide margin NASB95, but the first translation of those I've listed that is released in a single-column, non-thinline, wide-margin edition, I will make my primary translation for preaching and teaching for the next decade. You heard it here first.

Tags: NRSV, textual criticism, Movies, NIV, TNIV, NET, NLT, Wide-Margin

This past week, one of my students turned in an opinion paper that had what I felt was a very thought provoking quotation: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." The student attributed this saying to Plato in her paper, and in fact, I ran a Google search for the quotation along with the name Plato and found other references to it. I noted, however, that none of the attributions of the saying also included the source.

The more I thought about this quotation, the more I liked it. It communicates the need for empathy. It is in keeping with Jesus' so-called "golden rule" (“Treat others in the same way that you would want them to treat you” [Luke 6:31 NET]), which is the overriding ethic I seek to live by.

I liked the saying so much, I added it to the top of my blog, and it may still be there if you are reading this in the week I am writing it.

Then today, I got an email from a person who had found my site through Google. She corrected the saying I had at the top of my blog, suggesting instead that it came from Philo. So I ran a Google search with the saying, plus the name Philo, and sure enough, I found the quotation attributed to Philo as well. Again, however, no source was mentioned.

So remembering that I had the works of Philo in Accordance in both Greek and English, I ran a search simply for "Be kind" in the English module. No such luck. Then I ran the same search through every Accordance module I own--multitudes of reference works, hundreds of journals, extra-biblical texts such as the Pseudepigrapha, apocryphal Gospels, Jewish writings, the Church Fathers--easily over a million pages, I would guess.

[Unrelated to this quotation, I found another interesting saying from Pseudo-Chrysostom, quoted by Aquinas: "If God be kind, should His Priest be harsh?"]

Still no definitive source, but now the situation got murkier. One particular Accordance module, The Complete Gathered Gold (a collection of quotations) attributes the saying to two other individuals: Ian MacLaren and Harry Thompson! I'm not sure who either of these individuals are. No source was listed for either attribution.

So, it's a mystery at this point. Does anyone know the actual source for this saying? If you do, please leave the answer in the comments so that I can correct the heading at the top of my website!

Since everyone else is doing it, I thought I'd take the quiz, too. According to the site, this quiz "orders the philosophers/philosophies according to their compatibility with your expressed opinions on ethics." I think this would be a good quiz to give to my students when I occasionally teach Philosophy and Christian Thought at IWU. In fact, I imagine it would be interesting to have them take the quiz at both the beginning and end of the course.

Here are my results:



Interesting results. I would have never thought I'd agree with Augustine 100%, although I do like some of his thought. Interesting also that Aquinas came in second place.

Feel free to take the quiz yourself and leave your results in the comments.

HT: Iyov, Peter Kirk.

Tags: philosophy, Ethics

Context: Kathy and I spent the first two decades of our lives (and a little more) living in the deep south where people play a real sport called football. Now we live in Kentucky (which is practically Yankee territory) and where they are fond of basketball.

So this is the email I sent to local ABC television affiliate WHAS11 tonight:

Hey, I really like that new show Pushing Daisies, but you're showing a basketball game (which no one is really interested in) instead. Will Pushing Daisies be aired at a later time? Is this going to become a regular occurrence every time there's a basketball game? Can you show the basketball game at a later time instead?

Yes, I really sent that.

I've set up a Café Press Store for apparel and such related to This Lamp. You can find it at https://www.cafepress.com/thislamp. The first offerings made available relate strictly to the website itself, including the lamp & library logo:



In all there are over 50 items already available with the This Lamp log including mugs, book backs, and all manner of apparel for men, women, children, toddlers and even your pet.

The logo items are just the beginning. Part of my desire with the Café Press Store is to create really cool items related to biblical history, language and more--the kind of stuff I'd like to wear myself, but never see anywhere else. Later this afternoon, or tomorrow at the latest, I'm going to offer the first real project at the store, which I think many of you are going to get a kick out of.

Am I making a profit? Yes, but very little. I placed what I felt was a very modest markup on the items, and then I went back and made it even more modest. Although I think I have some good ideas, you never really know until you throw it out there. My hope is that the offerings I'm going to make in the future might get popular enough that it could provide a little bit of suplemental income--especially as we're gearing up to make a trip to China next year for our adoption.

You're not going to ever see anything like random Google ads are anything on This Lamp. Yes, there may be items such as these from Café Press and sometimes from Amazon, but these are extremely specific, and will always be something--as in the case of the above items--that I would use or wear myself. And I will.

So stay tuned, and check the store often. There's now a link in the menu at the top left. And if you have any ideas, feel free to send them along.

Tags: Café Press, Apparel

As you can see by the menu, the Site Index to This Lamp is back up. I had to take it down while I was using alpha & beta versions of RapidWeaver 3.6, but now everything is out of beta and the SiteMap module from Loghound has been updated as well.

Tags: RapidWeaver

From Fox News

Ohio Credit-Card Defendant Released on Bond After Reciting 23rd Psalm
Thursday, April 26, 2007

CINCINNATI — A man arrested Wednesday in Cincinnati got a break from a judge after passing a Bible quiz.

Eric Hine allegedly used a stolen credit card to try to buy things at a drugstore, authorities said.

When he appeared in court Wednesday morning to face a charge of receiving stolen property, his attorney described Hine as a church-goer in hopes that the judge would set a low bond.

Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge John Burlew was skeptical and asked Hine to recite the 23rd Psalm.

Hine did: all six verses. Some in the courtroom applauded.

Burlew was satisfied and released Hine on a $10,000 appearance bond, meaning he'll have to pay that amount if he doesn't show up for his next court date.

Of course, this should be even greater incentive to all those AWANA kids to memorize their verses.

From NPR:

Morning Edition, April 23, 2007 · During the past week, dozens of women in southwest China have been forced to have abortions even as late as nine months into the pregnancy, according to evidence uncovered by NPR.

China's strict family planning laws permit urban married couples to have only one child each, but in some of the recent cases — in Guangxi Province — women say they were forced to abort what would have been their first child because they were unmarried. The forced abortions are all the more shocking because family planning laws have generally been relaxed in China, with many families having two children.

Liang Yage and his wife Wei Linrong had one child and believed that — like many other couples — they could pay a fine and keep their second baby. Wei was 7 months pregnant when 10 family planning officials visited her at home on April 16.

Liang describes how they told her that she would have to have an abortion, "You don't have any more room for maneuver," he says they told her. "If you don't go [to the hospital], we'll carry you." The couple was then driven to Youjiang district maternity hospital in Baise city.

"I was scared," Wei told NPR. "The hospital was full of women who'd been brought in forcibly. There wasn't a single spare bed. The family planning people said forced abortions and forced sterilizations were both being carried out. We saw women being pulled in one by one."

Read the full story here. It only gets worse.

There's great irony to this story. Kathy and I sent our adoption dossier to China earlier this year. Sometime over the next two or three weeks, all of our information will have been translated and logged into the Chinese adoption database. Then we will wait somewhere close to a year and a half (the current average is 17 mos.) to receive our daughter because the demand for Chinese adoption is so very great.

Tags: China

I heard this joke years ago, but I cannot remember where I heard it. Does anyone know its source?

Two Dispensationalists walk into an Amillennial bar.

The bartender looks up and says, "What? You guys are still here?"

You just can't make this stuff up.

From www.knoe.com:



FYI: "Twin Cities" refers to Monroe and West Monroe, Louisiana.

Tags: Louisiana

I'm in the process of changing the site template again. I'd be interested to hear feedback as to how it looks compared to the previous template, and especially from Windows users. I'm still working out some of the kinks. And I notice immediately that the pictures I used before with drop shadows don't transfer over well, but I doubt I'm going to fix that on previous posts.

Incidentally, for those of you who are curious about such things, I edit this website using RapidWeaver, and this particular theme is called "My Desktop," which I obtained from Multithemes.

UPDATE 3/3: Based on comments, I've widened the main body. I've also tried to streamline subpages. The Multithemes came with .png objects that could be dropped into place. It's nifty to have that ability, but the stuff scattered around the borders may be a bit much. I'll see if it grows on me.

UPDATE 3/5: Okay, I've removed the .png objects and tried to do some basic cleanup. If everything looks okay after this next publish (which means you're reading this), I'll leave it alone at least for a while. I still may move the site to iWeb if the forthcoming v. 2.0 does everything I want it to do.

Tags: RapidWeaver

There are three sights which warm my heart
and are beautiful in the eyes of the Lord and of men:

concord among brothers,
amity among neighbours,
and a man and wife who are inseparable.

(Ecclesiasticus 25:1, REB)

[ἐν τρισὶν ὡραΐσθην καὶ ἀνέστην ὡραία ἔναντι κυρίου καὶ ἀνθρώπων ὁμόνοια ἀδελφῶν καὶ φιλία τῶν πλησίον καὶ γυνὴ καὶ ἀνὴρ ἑαυτοῖς συμπεριφερόμενοι]

Tags: REB, LXX

You have probably seen this, but it was emailed again to me last week so I am posting it here:

The Science of Santa Claus

No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children he has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh, and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the Earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75½ million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN times their normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload — not even counting the weight of the sleigh—to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison—this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

This analysis can be traced back as far as 1990, and has been attributed to a lot of different people. It's found all over the web, with many different "original" authors claiming it as their own. It awaits the writing of a better conclusion, however, since we all know that Santa Claus is not only very much alive, but does, in fact, accomplish everything set out above.

Tags: Christmas

Tags: Christmas

Please continue to pray for Andrew Wells. Prayers have certainly helped him because everything we were originally praying against has now passed. However, after very positive results last Thursday where he was awake and talking, and off the ventilator, he is now back in ICU. Andrew has been diagnosed with obliterative bronchiolitis as a complication of the graft vs. host disease that was in his lungs. He is back on the vent and under medical sedation. His condition is very severe and he needs your prayers. Andrew's wife, Leila, is posting updates on his blog when she's able at the Andrew Wells Report.

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As an Amazon.com Associate, I made $33.49 in referrals last quarter. My thanks go to all of you who made purchases through my online store or through one of the links on my blog. Amazon has reserved a gift certificate for me in the above amount which I will save for specific use toward my degree. Inevitably I regularly come across this or that book that is difficult to find, but I often can get it through the used book sellers on Amazon. So thanks again to all of you.

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A few weeks back I wrote about a former student of mine, Josh Clark, who had worked up a scheme to get his own Mac by asking folks to donate $1 through PayPal. Although he raised about $67 this way, the funds eventually stopped coming in. Then he found another scheme that just happened to work. He researched the companies that offer free computers once you sign up for so many offers. He followed one of them through to the end and now he actually has a MacBook Pro which after all was said and done cost him about $30! Read his story at "How I Got a Mac for Next to Nothing."

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Finally, the next installment on my favorite Bible translations (#8, the GNT) was halfway finished at the end of last week, but I'm neck-high grading papers for both IWU and SBTS and have had to make those a priority over everything else. Hopefully, I'll have that posted by the end of this week, so stay tuned.

And Happy Reformation Day!

Tags: Andrew, Macintosh

Ever dream at night that you can fly? Click on the image below to relive the experience.

HT: Dvorak Uncensored

The "singular they" is everywhere. And I predict that within ten to twenty years (if not sooner), it will be acceptable in most grammar books. I'm not going to make a frequent examples of these posts (because they're too many of them), but I will display prominent ones now and then.

I'm slowly getting used to the "singular they." It's already a standard in spoken dialogue, and it's here to stay--like it or not.

This example comes from Amazon.com where I was leaving feedback for a used book transaction. Notice the third question.

Tags: singular they

In response to my blog entry last week, "Why Britannica Trumps Wikipedia (Thank-You, Stephen Colbert)", David Ker over at Lingamish countered with an entry of his own, "A New Kind of Mind." Essentially, David sees my preference for a peer-reviewed encyclopedia like Britannica with articles written by experts in the field over the open and democratic editorial policies of the Wikipedia as "old school"; and he sees the Britannica as a dinosaur of a generation past.

Well, he didn't quite put it in those terms, but that's the feeling I got from him in our friendly little debate

Be sure to read David's entire blog entry, but here are a few main points:

The bigger picture here is globalization and democratization of knowledge. Wiki knowledge fits within the framework of a new way of organizing knowledge in the modern world. The era of printed collections of information gathered by an elite group of experts is slowly coming to an end.

I see googlization as a positive trend but it brings with it a big change in how we access information. I remember writing a paper on the subject of royalty in the history plays of Shakespeare. In order to find the quotes I needed I had to actually... gasp... read the plays! Over and over again. Can you imagine! What would you do today if you were writing such a paper? You'd google the topic of course! You'd start googling combinations of keywords until you were pointed to an online information source that perhaps allowed you to search Shakespeare's plays. In the process you'd probably come across other writers who had tackled the subject and use them in your bibliography.

So, Rick, I respect your concerns. We're all concerned about Wikipedia being abused for political and ideological reasons. But frankly, Encyclopedia Britannica has its own political and ideological aims as well. The difference is that with Wikipedia you have a collective mind composed of hundreds of editors "mediating truth" rather than some ivory tower cabal working at EB. Rather than shooting down Wikipedia, I think the real discussion we need to have is how can trusted sources of information like Encyclopedia Britannica embrace Wiki forms of information gathering and disseminating in order to stay dynamic.

Wikipedia is a new kind of encyclopedia for a new kind of mind. The global citizen is going to need global information and it is unlikely that this knowledge is going to carry the name of an 18th century colonializer.

That last line was quite a cheap shot, don't you think?

Anyway, taking the high road, I ignored the ad-biblionem attack, and gently responded with these words in the comments:

No, I don't want Britannica updated by Wikipedia's methods.

Here's the deal...I'm not completely against the Wikipedia. I use it regularly and have quite a few links to it on my blog. I created a link to it in the blog I wrote today.

But I have trouble being confident in the Wikipedia for any kind of serious investigation of a subject. I might go there, but I don't know who wrote the information and I don't know how accurate the information is. At least with Britannica, I can at least know it was written by an expert in the area. Granted, "experts" can have bias, too, but at least the information in Britannica is not a moving target.

As for research as in regard to my students, the real problem is that the average student--high school, college, and even higher--does not adequately know how to discern good sources from bad sources.

I've watched as students run searches in Google and immediately run to the top selections regardless of whether they are actual good sources or not.

I'm not afraid of the democratization of knowledge, but more of the democratization of truth. That's what Colbert was driving at. If enough people think it's true, it becomes fact. And unfortunately, too many people don't know the difference.

Then in a counter-point to my counterpoint to his blog entry which was a counter-point to my blog entry, David wrote the following:

1. Determining truth. You see the concept of an "expert" being a safe-guard against falsehood, while I see the concept of "democratic editing" being that safe-guard. Maybe another way of looking at this is that it is an authority question.

2. Old vs. new media. Wikipedia and EB represent two very different forms of publishing. It seems to me that the rate of information growth and change in this century makes the thought of waiting 20 years to get an update unthinkable. At the same time, hyper-editing at Wikipedia seems fraught with danger.

My response: Point #1. It's not merely the "concept of an 'expert' being a safe-guard against falsehood," but rather an expert who is peer-reviewed by other experts (i. e., Britannica's editorial board). Granted, any such individual or group can have agendas or political biases, but at least I know my source since the larger and more significant articles in Britannica are signed. Yes, it certainly is an authority question, because if I read something on the Wikipedia, I have to ask, "Says who?"

Point #2. Britannica editions are actually becoming updated more quickly. For the print edition, a new 16th edition was recently released, plus they release updates annually in their Book of the Year 20XX. And as for the online edition, they update the content daily (okay, I'll admit that I learned this last fact from the "Encyclopedia Britannica" entry on the Wikipedia. So?).

And, David, your last sentence: "...hyperediting at Wikipedia seems fraught with danger." That's entirely my point--couldn't have said it better myself. The problem with the Wikipedia as a consistently serious source of factual information is that the content is--or can be--a moving target.

So, finally, in the spirit of solidarity for Britannica fans and Wiki-skeptics everywhere, I have created a brand new Britannica-linked web badge that will permanently stay in my sidebar. The Britannica button shows my support for the time-honored encyclopedia set (but doesn't necessarily mean I'll start to link to articles on the online edition since you have to pay for that, and I doubt that many of you have a subscription).

And David, just remember that every time someone reads your anti-Britannica blog and decides to forego a purchase of the print set in favor of a relativistic, knowledge-and-truth-democratized online source, well... that's 32 extra days in purgatory for you after you die (one day per each volume in the current set).

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*The phrase "Sum of Human Knowledge" comes from a 1913 advertisement for the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Image Source: Wikipedia

Tags: Wikipedia, Britannica

I'm too busy today to blog anything myself, but two posts have caught my eye and I'll pass them on to you.

First, over at the Better Bibles Blog, Peter Kirk has accused the TNIV translators of having a complementarian agenda. Yes, you heard that right--a complementarian agenda. Usually, the TNIV translators are accused of having an egalitarian agenda, so Peter's post is highly ironic. I personally don't think it has either agenda, although complementarians and egalitarians are both represented on the thoroughly evangelical translation committee.

Second, my old friend (and church planter) Bill Craig has written a very moving blog entry entitled "Monster House." Here he describes the living conditions and encounters with neighbors that he and his wife Jill experienced during their first church plant out of seminary. Here's an excerpt, but be sure to read the whole entry:

The upstairs shower was about to drop through the ceiling any minute. You could see the center part of the ceiling dropping with the outline of the shower in the upstairs bathroom. My biggest nightmare was that a large, naked, angry, tattooed, drinking and swearing mother would drop through while I was eating my breakfast and doing my devotionals and I’d lose my appetite for the rest of my life. But maybe it was a selfish hope, because maybe then we could have the little children and show them the love of Christ they didn’t know.

With all seriousness, she said, "They said that we should take roles that relate to our strengths. I believe one of my strengths is to play devil's advocate."

"I bet they don't fully appreciate such talent in your meetings," I responded with slight sarcasm.

With mock protest she replied, "It's like a gift of discernment, I think."

"More likely, a gift of contrarianism" I said smiling.

Tags: Kathy

This Lamp is created using RapidWeaver--not just the blog, but the whole site. They've released a public beta this morning of a new version to the software, and considering I've already found some bugs, it's definitely betaware. Regardless, the template I was using for the site was third party and has not yet been updated to v. 3.5. So I'm temporarily using one of the new RapidWeaver templates. I don't really like this one, but of all the new ones, it was the only one with a white background (other than that one with a skateboard). It seems like there's some problems with the comments in a few places. Hopefully, I can figure this out soon.

One good thing though is that I finally have true permalinks. I've been inserting them manually since November for folks who occasionally might want to link to a blog. I think the old links will still work, but I'll also gradually be removing my old permalinks. Look for the new ones at the top of the post.

I've also had to consolidate my menu structure because this template only supports menus on top (yuck) and then only one row. Everything's still here. You might just have to look around.

As soon as my former template is updated or if the RapidWeaver folks release some different templates, I'll change again.

Tags: RapidWeaver

A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand. He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up. In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk, says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son." So, he goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years.

Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot. So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing, "We missed the "R," we missed the "R." His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.

The young monk asks the old abbot, "What's wrong, father?"

With a choking voice, the old abbot replies, "The word was celebrate."

Friday night (May 19), I've been asked to speak at the Whitefield Academy Senior Banquet. I was chaplain and taught Bible at Whitefield from 2000 to 2005. The students I will be speaking to were in my classes from their freshmen to their junior years. [Irrelevant point of interest: If you go to the Whitefield website, there's a flash slideshow of photos on the main page. In one of the pictures, you can still see me in graduation ceremony regalia talking to two graduates. That picture was taken around 2001, I believe.]

Here's my outline:

"10 Tips for College (and the Rest of Life)"
Supporting Text: Psalm 121

  1. Guard your heart (Prov 4:23).
  2. Get involved in campus life (and community/neighborhood/church life).
  3. Don’t get in debt.
  4. Plan for the future, but don’t miss the NOW while getting there.
  5. Do all things with excellence (but excellence does not mean perfection).
  6. Make time for play.
  7. Never stop learning.
  8. Think globally in your career.
  9. Think globally in your faith.
10. Know the difference between career and calling.

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend;
  Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

        --Groucho Marx


     Above: photo of my Bessie Mae taken by Chip Chrisman

Courtesy of Snapshirts.

Below is part of the text we read for NT Colloquium today:


Do not hide a different thought in your heart while uttering another.
Change not yourself according to the spot, like a polyp that clings to the rock.
Be sincere to all, speak what is from your soul.
Whoever wrongs willfully is a bad man; but if he does so under compulsion,
I shall not pass sentence, for it is each man's intention that is examined.
Do not pride yourself on wisdom nor on strength nor on riches.
The only God is wise and mighty and at the same time rich in blessings.
Do not afflict your heart with bygone evils;
for what has been done can no more be undone.

--The Sentences of Pseudo-Phcylides, lines 48-56, written perhaps somewhere between 30 BC and AD 40.

These are not original to me. I was going through some old documents and came across this collection. But if dogs could write, and if they chose to write haikus, I really believe they would sound like these--especially if a dog is as silly as our Bessie (pictured to the right).

These haikus will only mean something to you if you own and/or like dogs. Otherwise, please move along...

I love my master;
Thus I perfume myself with
This long-rotten squirrel.

I lie belly-up
In the sunshine, happier than
You ever will be

Today I sniffed
Many dog butts--I celebrate
By kissing your face.

I sound the alarm!
Paperboy--come to kill us all--
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

I sound the alarm!
Mailman Fiend--come to kill us all--
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

I sound the alarm!
Meter reader--come to kill all--
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

I sound the alarm!
Garbage man-come to kill us all--
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

I sound the alarm!
Neighbor's cat--come to kill us all!
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

I lift my leg and
Wiz on each bush. Hello, Spot -
Sniff this and weep

My human is home!
I am so ecstatic I have
Made a puddle

Sleeping here, my chin
On your foot -- no greater bliss -- well,
Maybe catching cats

Look in my eyes and
Deny it. No human could
Love you as much I do

The cat is not all
Bad--she fills the litter box
With Tootsie Rolls

Dig under fence--why?
Because it's there. Because it's
There. Because it's there.

I am your best friend,
Now, always, and especially
When you are eating.

I love this picture that I took at the Cornerstone Music Festival five or so years ago. I thought I had lost it, but when I recently upgraded to iPhoto 6, the software scanned my directories and "found" about 150 recovered photos, including this one.

This picture was taken about midway through the week. These boys had spent all their money on no telling what, and were asking folks who walked by for their pocket change. I laughed at the candid message on the sign: "Will Do Nothing for Food or Money" and then in smaller print, "Don't give crackers!" Evidently someone had tried. When I walked by, they already had quite a bit of change in their cup. Honesty about their willingness to do nothing was paying off.

I asked if I could take their picture. They said I could for 50¢.

Tags: Cornerstone

Since the start of this blog, I've sent out little email updates to friends and family once every week or two that lists new entries. I'm no longer doing that--at least not in the same way as in the past.

You do have the option of subscribing to this blog, though. One easy way is to simply subscribe to the RSS feed. If you don't know how or don't want to do that, an even easier option is to enter your email address in the "NotifyList" form in the sidebar on the left. Once every week or so, I'll send out an update, but now the choice is in your hands and open to anyone reading this blog. You will NOT receive an alert with each new blog entry, but once every one to week at most.

A surprising number of people have already subscribed since I added the form a couple of days ago. You can also subscribe right here in this blog entry:

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I came across this at Travis Kerns' blog, and although I usually avoid seminary-related postings, I just couldn't pass this one up.

Over on the Baptistlife.com website, which purports to be "an online gathering place for Baptists," there's a link for seminaries. On that page a list of primarily CBF-affiliated Baptist seminaries are highlighted with the six SBC seminaries conveniently relegated to the bottom of the page.

In some very ironic mis-wording, perhaps some kind of bizarre Freudian slip, the Baptist Seminary of Kentucky is said to provide "theological education 'committed to spiritual death, intellectual honesty and moral integrity.'"


Spiritual death?! Committed to spiritual death? What would that mean? What would classes promoting spiritual death look like?

See the ad for yourself on the seminaries page, but do it quick before it's corrected. I mean... I assume it's a mistake.

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UPDATE: The more I thought about this "typo," the more I was curious about it. So I went to BSK's website and tracked down the original quotation. On their About Us: MIssion page, they describe themselves as "committed to spiritual depth... ." Now that's just one letter off, but one letter sure makes a heckuva difference. Not to mention the fact that the letters A and P are on opposite sides of the keyboard.

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UPDATE II: In the spirit of the Golden Rule (Luke 6:31), I thought it only proper to alert someone to this mistake. So I sent emails over the weekend to both the Baptist Seminary of Kentucky and Bruce Gourley who runs Baptistlife.com. The error has now been corrected.

By Kathy Mansfield


On an old porch swing
Your arms first held me;
I knew right then and there
Our love was meant to be.

On a new porch swing
Built by your own hands,
We gazed at our new house
And knew we had great plans.

On that same porch swing
Just the other day,
I looked back on our life
And love that’s here to stay.


You can email Kathy at akmansfield@mac.com.

by Kathy Mansfield


If ever someone has been broken and fixed
I think it would be I.
And lo, and behold, I figured out
The answer to my “Why?”

Sometimes God must let us fall
And feel Life’s harshest wrath,
Only then can we arise
To walk straighter on His path.

To others I might seem to be
Someone whose life is marred,
But God sees me as clean and new,
Not as someone scarred.


You can email Kathy at akmansfield@mac.com.

1. The Christmas Tree originated in western Germany during the 16th century by a merging of two Christmas symbols. The first of these symbols was a "paradise tree," used in a popular medieval play about Adam and Eve. This fir tree was set up as a prop, hung with apples, and represented the Garden of Eden. The Germans began setting up the tree in their homes on Dec. 24, already known as the religious feast day of Adam and Eve. The second symbol was called a "Christmas pyramid," which was a triangular-shaped set of wooden shelves holding Christmas figurines, and decorated with evergreens, candles, and adorned at the top with a star, representing the star followed by the magi to the Christ Child. These two symbols merged by the 16th century, and by the 17th century our modern Christmas tree was on its way to North America with the German settlers.

2. Gift Giving, as a part of the Christmas tradition, stems from an ancient Roman custom called Strenae, where the Roman citizens would give "good luck" gifts of fruit, pastries, or gold to their friends on New Years Day. In England the tradition later survived as what was called "Boxing Day." On Dec. 26 the priests used to open the alms-boxes and distribute the contents among the poor in the parish. Later, it became customary to give Christmas "boxes" to the servants and public workers.

3. Santa Claus is thought to have been St Nicholas, a 4th century bishop in Asia Minor who was famous for his generosity, later known as the patron saint of children. However, the jolly, fat, bearded old man dressed in a red suit was derived by American writer Washington Irving in 1822 and portrayed as such in "Twas the night before Christmas." In 1863 the cartoonist Thomas Nest ultimately captured the look of the one we now know as "Santa Claus." Note: In northern Germany, it is said that Santa Claus' assistant Knecht Ruprecht (Servant Rupert) gives presents to the good children and whipping rods to the parents of bad ones.

4. Stockings were actually shoes filled with straw and carrots and left by children for the horse of Saint Nicholas and placed in front of the fireplace. This practice, beginning around 1100 A.D., assumed that the straw and carrots would be replaced by gifts and within a few decades evolved into the hanging of stockings from the mantle of the fireplace.

5. The Mistletoe was, like many of the evergreens, brought inside during the winter months to serve as a reminder that Spring would come, and was said to have such a spiritual influence that if two enemies met under a branch of the mistletoe they would drop their weapons and embrace. This old belief may have been the origin of the modern custom of kissing under the mistletoe.

6. The Christmas Wreath symbolized the strength of life overcoming the forces of winter. Christians extended this to represent the eternal, unending life promised through Jesus.

7. Holly, with its prickly leaves and wild berries, was adopted by Christians to stand for the crown of thorns and drops of blood worn by Jesus at His crucifixion.

8. Poinsettias, a newer tradition developed by a U.S. minister to Mexico in the 1800's, were symbolized by their green and red Christmas colors. The green represented the continuance of life and the red stood for the blood of Christ.

9. Caroling is said to have begun around 1818 by Josef Mohr, the parish priest of Oberndorf. It is said that on Christmas Eve Father Mohr wrote the three stanzas of "Silent Night" as a surprise for his parishioners because he felt they would be disappointed when they learned that the parish organ had broken down. Earlier in the day he had blessed a newborn baby and it is likely that the first stanza was inspired by this event. In order to have some music for his poem he rushed over to his friend Franz Gruber, a teacher and church organist. Within a few hours the melody was completed and at midnight mass that evening the two men sang the masterpiece for the first time.

Source: Unsecured. This information was distributed via a handout in my Sunday School class this morning. If you know a definite source for any of this information, let me know and I will post it here.

Guest blog from the mind of Andrew Wells

Things That I Desperately Wish Would Happen While Having to Watch Bob the Builder with my son:

8. That the other machines would stage an intervention for Lofty the Crane concerning his self-esteem issues.

7. That Dizzy the Cement Mixer would start taking A.D.D. medication.

6. That the ATF would bust Farmer Pickles for moonshining, since there is no way he can make money giving away eggs.

5. That Mr. Bentley the building inspector would inform Bob that, due to federal regulations, Bob can’t build it.

4. That the town that Bob and company live in would run out of money and therefore be unable to give Bob so many contracts.

3. That Wendy would whistleblow on Bob about his use of shoddy materials and cheap labor.

2. That Rolly the Steamroller would flatten Spud into a bunch of mashed potatoes.

1. That the DVD would spontaneously combust.


Andrew Wells can be contacted at awusceng@yahoo.com.

Two years ago I started blogging. Originally, it wasn't This Lamp. Rather it was "Rick's Blog: Religion, Technology, Books, Movies and Politics (and this This Lamp...and that's all I need...)," which as I've explained before was a play on a line from Steve Martin's movie, The Jerk. My goal was not to focus on just one area, but on all the areas listed above, but unapologetically from the viewpoint of a Christian worldview. A number of really good blogs that I read regularly are purposefully very focused. In doing this their writers find their own niche. Although I've been tempted to do that at times, I still desire to keep that potpourri-style approach to my writing. It fits my personality, I believe.

If you look back on my entry on this day last year ("The Blog at One Year"), you'll see I noted that I had written 55 blogs that first year which met my goal (at least based on averages) to write one blog per week. Well, how did I compare with number of blogs in the second year? Drum roll please... This is the 177th blog I've written which means that I wrote 122 entries in year two, more than twice the number of my first year. Lately, I've been creating one or more posts everyday, but I don't ever anticipate writing the kind of blog that has multiple entries added all day long. I don't hav